In Chapter Nine of This Is Herman Cain—entitled “‘Forty-Five’—A Special Number,” Cain notes that his “conception, gestation, and birth all occurred within” the year 1945 (true of pretty much anyone born in the last three months of that year). He then launches into a detailed account of how “45 keeps on popping up as I go about the business of being elected—you guessed it—as the forty-fifth president of the United States of America.”

Meaningful signposts include events both past (in 1945, Reader’s Digest published a version of Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which Cain ran across last year and loved) and future (in 2013, the year the 45th president will take office, Cain and his wife will celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary.)

In some cases the digits 4 and 5 are only part of a figure, like the times when one of Cain’s weekly commentaries ran to 645 words or when the final leg of a campaign trip took place on Flight 1045 traveling at 45,000 feet. At times the 45 in question is only tangentially related to Cain, as when he cites a Las Vegas campaign event where he met a couple celebrating their 45th anniversary. And in one case, the key moment ultimately doesn’t have anything to do with 45 at all: at an early strategy meeting, Cain and two aides believed they were seated at table 45 in a restaurant, only to be told that there were only 43 tables total. Regardless, it all adds up to something big for Cain.

Everybody's got something...LBJ showing his surgery scars, JFK and his drugs, Nancy Reagan and astrology, Clinton and cheeseburgers, Obama and his weird minister, Ike and golf, Truman and brisk walks. So Cain is into numbers. Big woop.

Noting coincidence and numerical patterns doesn't automatically make one a numerologist.

After Jack Kennedy was shot, Cab Calloway came out with a record (I know Ann remembers this) about the many coincidences between his shooting and Abraham Lincoln's. Much of the material had to do with the number of letters in names, etc.

No one at the time thought the record was occult or anything.

In any case, nobody had a problem with Hillary trying to channel Eleanor Roosevelt when she was running for POTUS.

PS Can't agree with Sixty on Herman, but he's on the money as far as the single-celled intelligence.

If the sun refuse to shine,I don't mind, I don't mind,If the mountains fell in the sea,let it be, it ain't me.Alright, 'cos I got my own world to look through,And I ain't gonna copy you.

Now if 6 turned out to be 9,I don't mind, I don't mind,Alright, if all the hippies cut off all their hair,I don't care, I don't care.Dig, 'cos I got my own world to live throughAnd I ain't gonna copy you.

Sixty, I've said this before and I'll repeat it; Herman has to do several things if he wants to advance.

The most important is hit the briefing book and make sure of his facts. Chris Wallace pretty much did in his campaign with one foreign policy question and the only reason he came back is a very good debate performance.

The other, and Karl Rove and Larry Sabato, whether a lot of Conservatives want to hear it or not, are on the money here, is that he has to build up his organization, if not his money, in the early primary states and start concentrating on them.

When Rove did his thing on Hannity, he noted Herman was in TX and TN while Anita Perry was in SC. It's at least 2 months to the first primaries and he needs to make sure of at least one early victory.

Maybe he's on the autism spectrum -- I know a lot of geeks, being kind of aspberger-ey myself. In homeschooling circles I'm in, I notice boys and girls who geek out on math, because they're free to do so and because geekery isn't something that's peer-pressured out of them.

I attend a statewide convention every year, and some speakers love to point out "coincidences" in numbers. It's especially popular now among Christian homeschool groups to talk about math as something God created and likes very much. Herman Cain is a lifelong student of this sort of thinking.

Superstitious? Not necessarily. Science and math go to infinite places far beyond most of the comprehension of those of us on this board.

I used to work in the computer department for the DoD, and we computer geeks knew we had a problem when the lawyers walked in. It was common knowledge in our department that lawyers were the most technologically-challenged end-users, and also the most arrogant in their ignorance. You could tell them they had an IDtenT error, and they'd believe you and then huff that it was your fault.

(Glenn Reynolds is the exception to this, of course, but then again, he's not a government lawyer).

Most politicians are lawyers, and probably get along badly with geeks. Most journalists probably failed algebra. I've worked with plenty of "guvvies" in my life to know that someone like Herman Cain will drive them crazy.

"So voting for a guy who spent 20 years in a racist church is okay, but voting for a math major who finds interesting (debatably) patterns in numbers is a no go."

When he refuses to get on a plane that isn't Flight something-45 and insists on being seated in the 45th seat or orders his food on purpose so the bill ads up to $45, then I'll think it's something important.

As a couple of people said... math geek. Give me a reason to think it's not just something fun for him, that it's not simply taking pleasure in serendipity.

The reason there is a focus on Cain is that we (WH, K-street super consultants, media) want him to win the GOP nomination, if Perry does not win.

Either Perry (who will be show-cased by us as backward person) and Cain (who will be show-cased as just not right) will lose insanely to the POTUS Obama.

The way we figure: Build up both Cain and Perry. Make sure one of them gets light criticism but positive coverage. Convince GOP to vote for them in the primary. By all means, make sure Romney screws up badly. Feed Romneycare stories just before any debate, rattle him, and give Perry a way to goad him.

We win by attrition. We help GOP to defeat Romney. We defeat GOP (Perry or Cain). We control the WH, House, and Senate in Nov. 2012.

I am not an aspie, that I know of. I just have a tendency to count things -- not all the time.

But I'll do a crowd estimate somewhat randomnly, for the heck of it, when I'm someplace with a bunch of people.

I have counted concrete blocks in church walls, seating rows at a graduation, turkeys in a field ....

I don't usually write about it (this is the first time) but I haven mentioned it to my husband a couple times.

I also don't remember the numbers very long. Except one bunch of turkeys. They hang out in our pasture and I check and see if the coyote or bobcat got any of them. ;-) [There are 16. 3 mommas and 13 now grown babies.]

So there's a litmus test against having a thing about numbers? I couldn't run for president?

How about the author of the article find out what Obama's courses and grades in college were? How about his passport in 1981?

Byro-Mito--IM against the occult.Yr the little crowley queer occultist and stoner here, not to say an untalented, lying blowhard. Like yr boyfriend MxK. Speaking of numbers, lets count how many names you got on here, hijo de puta, hijo de perra. Looks about like average-- 7-8.

I do want the candidates to care about numbers -- and not poll numbers. Real numbers.

Private sector job numbers. Deficit numbers. Budget numbers. Bottom line numbers. Numbers that will reflect growth. Numbers that show the people of the United States are generous as well as productive.

Numbers which one does not find in crony loans to solar projects with crappy balance sheets and a Finnish scissor company which is building "green" cars with crappy mileage and $89,000 price tags.

Yeah, I'm going to recycle an old comment (cause I'm into sustainable commenting):

From Amity Shlaes on the most greatest Democratist president evah!!!:

At some points Roosevelt seemed to understand the need to counter deflation. But his method for doing so generated a whole new set of uncertainties. Roosevelt personally experimented with the currency — one day, in bed, he raised the gold price by 21 cents. When Henry Morgenthau, who would shortly become Treasury Secretary, asked him why, Roosevelt said that “its a lucky number, because its three times seven.”

"Cain's another wingnut, regardless of race. Nearly dyslexic in public." Really? Going to run with the old republican is stupid plan? Lord knows they hand out those math and masters in computer science degrees out like candy. Man, good thing Truman was a Democrat.

"It was common knowledge in our department that lawyers were the most technologically-challenged end-users, and also the most arrogant in their ignorance."

It astounds me that Althouse would not have examined interest in numbers long ago and realized that, like all human endeavors, that interest can trend to both the bathetic and the profound and to mixed postures throughout the spectrum between those poles.

That numbers exhibit patterns of complexity and meaning is knowledge I expect any educated person to have gained, appreciated and grasped in some minimum detail at least.

A list of numerologists would include luminaries of every speciality of science, theology and mathematics. Mathematics, after all, is Theology by another name. Always has been, always will be.

Logic and semantics, which are employed by lawyers, are branches of Mathematics/Theology. In former times, lawyers were trained in theology and mathematics as well as in law and rhetoric. Those inquiries and skills are mutually supporting and mutually necessary.

The want is to be broadly skilled enough to be able to discern the difference between numerology and necromancy (aka Voodoo) and to appreciate the former and abominate the latter.

A significance of the number 45 is, as some commentators mention, that its pythmen (sum of its digits) is 9 and 9 is the perfect number in that the digits of its multiples sum to 9. 9 returns to 9. That makes it perfect, unitary, self-sufficient. No other number has this quality.

It is a fact that a life surrounded by 9s is satisfying while, for example, a life surrounded by 6s is in conflict and a life surrounded by 4s or 8s is in decay.

The pythmen of 666 is 9. While the numerical code to the Book of Revelation is lost, so that the meaning of the work is opaque because it is in numerical code that needs a key to be unlocked, it can be stated that at least on its face the so-called "number of the beast" is in fact the number of unity and therefore the number of God. 666 is a divine number, not a devilish one.

This makes theological sense because, on principle, evil has no independent ontological status, and so the devil has to be considered as God in a really ugly dress, make-up and hair, self-opposing for the sake of, what?, enacting the drama of life. Why? How else is he to spend his time and how else are we to spend ours?

Glenn Reynolds is the exception to this, of course, but then again, he's not a government lawyer)

The dear perfesser is a employee of the state of Tennessee. And although I guess he is not technically a lawyer, he is a lawyer hired to teach law by the government. Which is why it is so funny when his wife threatens to "go Galt". Is she going to make him quit his job?

Good grief Althouse. Something more substantive please (not that it would matter to me since this is about tossing a creepy, crony, establishment Republican wind sock).

Cain has the guts to propose and defend, rather than focus group and wonder. Cain the non-politician, anti-DC establishment (and yet pro-business) candidate is a far better hope for change than Obama or (ick) Romney.

Uh, fractals anyone? The truth is math/numbers are extremely important in biology/chemistry/physics, and yes, they do repeat. That ain't numerology, that's science. As someone commented, a mathematician would know that and probably have a lifelong interest. Not surprising at all. Kind of surprised to see it brought up with such skepticism on this site. Oh well, when the entire credentialed world is turning against the interloper maybe it's not so surprising.